1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to an electronic card and more specifically it relates to an electronic card with a programmable magnetic stripe which is programmed by transferring data from a smartphone for reducing the number of debit, credit and other payment cards in a wallet. A near field communication connection (NFC or RFID) is used for transferring data to and from a smartphone.
2. Description of the Prior Art
People typically carry around most of their payment cards such as credit and debit cards in a wallet or purse, and to use a particular card, the desired card is selected and then removed from the wallet or purse. Users want a more convenient way to handle their payment cards, but existing solutions all have problems which limit their use. Some companies have tried to solve this by having users load payment information in their phones and pay with near field communication (NFC), barcodes or other wireless signals using their phone. There are many problems with this. One problem is NFC equipped payment terminals are not in common use in the United States. To make NFC (or other wireless methods) popular, NFC equipped payment terminals would need to be available at substantially every merchant in the U.S. This mass deployment will take years and cost billions of dollars. Also, to use a mobile phone as a payment card substitute, a user would be unable to pay if their phone was unavailable, such as out of battery. Also, since payment terminals in places such as restaurants are usually in a back room area, users would have to give other people (such as waiters at a restaurant) their cell phones if they wanted to pay. Security is also a big problem for traditional payment cards and smartphone payment systems. Lost and stolen wallets contribute to a large percentage of credit card fraud. All of these problems and more are solved with the invention described herein.